Here is a very straightforward commentary by Peter Wehner, who is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and served in the last three Republican administrations and is a New York Times contributing opinion writer. He is conservative and a Christian. He is by no means a support of Hillary Clinton and has written other opinion articles on her. This is worth a read. It's not just about Trump. It's about the church and its moral voice...THE HEAVENLY HEIGHTS OF EVANGELICAL HYPOCRISYDespite everything that has happened over the past few days, or for that matter the last 15 months, there is one group that has been rock solid in its support of Donald Trump: religious conservatives.Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins, the Rev. Robert Jeffress and Ralph Reed have all restated their support for Trump in light of the release of a videotape that shows him to be not only lewd but a sexual predator. “A ten-year-old tape of a private conversation with a talk show host ranks low on their hierarchy of concerns,” Reed said, about people of faith. Immediately after the release of the videotape, Eric Metaxas, an influential Evangelical biographer and radio talk show host, decided to make light of the whole thing in a Tweet: “BREAKING: Trump caught using foul language, combing his hair oddly. Could this be the end of his campaign?” (Metaxas later deleted the tweet, claiming he was “unaware of the details” of the story, despite having tweeted about it.)So this is what is distinctive about Christian involvement in American politics today: leading evangelical leaders standing by their man, regardless of how depraved and misogynistic he is. Those who for decades have spoken about the importance of character in public leaders, lamented the degraded state of our culture and worried about the human cost of the sexual revolution are the most reliable defenders of a man whose life is a moral cesspool.Which raises this question before tonight’s debate: What could they possibly be listening for now? What could Trump do that would shake their support for him? When Trump said last January, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” it was not yet clear that the group he could most rely on was religious conservatives. But Trump’s repulsive videotaped conversation is not an aberration; it is instead the personification of his attitudes toward (among other things) women and wedding vows. It is only the latest link — and not the last one — in a long, ugly chain. Some of us have been warning since shortly after Trump entered the campaign that this was what we could expect from him. Whatever else Trump can be faulted for, he did not hide who he was. The cruelty, the misogyny, the appeals to nativism and racism, the disordered personality were all on vivid display. And yet many Republicans simply shrugged. They deluded themselves and tried to delude others into believing this wasn’t who Trump really was. Or, if it was, they assured us that he would change. But Trump has stayed true to himself. One other thing needs to be said. It is not as if evangelicals, in embracing Trump, did so because he was a committed and articulate advocate for the causes they care about most. Quite the opposite. Trump is a late and cynical convert to many causes that are important to them. It is a fantasy to pretend that as president he would expend effort on their behalf. Trump would betray them as he betrays everyone. The allegiance of Christian conservatives, and the hypocrisy it required, was won for virtually nothing in return.
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